


the feelings in my headspace rearranged

by andfinallywearehome



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Depending on How You Want to Read It, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, all is well in the end though, could be canon compliant or could be an AU, its kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 08:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14541213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andfinallywearehome/pseuds/andfinallywearehome
Summary: Clary looks at Jace like he personally hung the moon whilst Simon spills scarlet flowers from his mouth, leaving a trail of petals on the ground behind him.[or: the one where simon knows far too much about unrequited love.]





	the feelings in my headspace rearranged

**Author's Note:**

> i bashed this out in like an hour during a long late night trip to the university laundry room. 
> 
>  
> 
> title comes from the song 'Fools' by lauren aquilina, and i own nothing recognisable.

Clary isn’t in love with him.

  
This isn’t a problem until they reach their freshman year of high school, when one morning finds a fifteen year old Simon bent over the sink and staring at the neat pile of red flowers covered in the toothpaste he has just used.

  
He’s freaked out at first - who wouldn’t be? Unrequited love isn’t fun for anyone, and even the movies can’t make you think otherwise - but, well, you get used to it after a while.

  
\- x -

  
It’s just a thing that happens. Simon has come to accept it now. It’s like how he takes his coffee in the morning - black, sugar, with a side order of daffodils that are as red as Clary’s hair.

  
Apparently, accepting it makes it much easier to handle. It doesn’t burn the inside of his throat as much when he knows it’s coming.

  
Apparently, jealousy makes it worse.

  
Jace throws himself into their lives, quite literally, and the discomfort in Simon’s throat, the itch of unrequited love that he can never quite reach, is sent into flames, roaring and furious and burning.

  
Clary looks at Jace like he personally hung the moon whilst Simon spills scarlet flowers from his mouth, leaving a trail of petals on the ground behind him.

  
People are wrong, because jealousy isn’t green. It’s fucking _red._

  
\- x -

  
Things get easier after he meets Raphael.

  
He can’t explain it, but sometimes he’ll catch Raphael looking at him with _something_ in his eyes, and Simon’s chest automatically feels lighter, as if a weight has been lifted from him. It’s almost like he can _breathe_ again.

  
He hasn’t felt like that in a long time.

  
\- x -

  
Of course, nothing good lasts forever.

  
Simon is cut off because of his own stupid mistakes, and he keeps up a front that he’s okay with this, that the look on Raphael’s face isn’t now burned into his brain forever, until he’s curled up on the floor of Jace’s bathroom, knees drawn up to his chest, because _holy fuck his chest hurts_ \--

  
He coughs, tripping and stumbling over his own unnecessary breaths.

  
The petals in his lap are the same colour blue as that stupid suit he borrowed from Raphael.

  
\- x -

  
The dating scene is complicated enough as it is.

  
It’s even worse when you wake up and find that you’re choking on the blue flowers that already litter the floor beside your bed.

  
\- x -

  
If he could, he would thank God personally for Maia.

  
Maia doesn’t ask about the flowers, nor the blue that never seems to leave his mouth, his fingertips. She helps Simon clean up the flowers that have spilled overnight. She brings him water when Simon is coughing so forcefully that he himself psychically can’t move. She kisses his forehead, and runs her fingers through his hair as he wonders whether the actual coughs themselves will kill him before he even gets the chance to drown on those stupid, _stupid_ blue flowers.

  
 _You’re okay_ , Maia keeps whispering, murmuring into his hairline. _You’re okay, Simon, you’re okay_.

  
Simon wishes he could believe her.

  
\- x -

  
His mom is getting concerned about him. But, then again, that’s nothing new these days.

  
“Have you got a chest infection?” She asks over dinner, as Simon tries to hold in another cough, desperate to keep the mouthful of petals from tumbling onto the plate in front of him.

  
“I’m fine, Mom,” he manages to says, but the rasp in his voice clearly doesn’t convince her. She looks like she’s about to enquire more, to push it, but Becky clears her throat, just in time, and she concedes.

  
“If you say so, monkey.” And then: “You know, you really should invite that band manager of yours round for dinner one of these days. What was his name again?”

  
Simon almost screams.

  
\- x -

  
After a gentle (and another less gentle) push from Isabelle, Simon decides to take Maia out on a proper dinner date. He can be a gentleman when he wants to be, after all, and Maia deserves the best that there is, so he really tries hard with planning this, to make it as special as possible.

  
Of course, they _would_ end up at the same restaurant, the same _table_ , as their ex partners, because that’s the way the universe works when it comes to them.

  
Clary and Jace laugh their way through dinner, taking it in their stride, but Maia is oddly quiet, less talkative than usual, even on the ride home. Simon thinks, at first, that it’s the awkwardness of the revelation that she’s slept with Jace. He tries to reassure her that he’s not bothered by it, but the words die in his throat before they can fully come to fruition, because Maia is stood in the middle of his apartment with a hand clapped to her mouth and those _oh, so familiar_ soft red petals falling through her fingers.

  
\- x -

  
“We’re both fools, aren’t we?” Maia murmurs, much later, as they share the couch, soft and warm in their pyjamas as they watch dumb, low-brow comedy shows on Netflix. She’s sipping a glass of water, and the glass is stained red from where her lips have touched it.

  
“Hopeless fools,” Simon agrees, swiping traces of blue from his own mouth.

  
Together, they drink a purple toast to that.

  
\- x -

  
When the flowers falling from his mouth are tinged red with blood, Simon seeks out Raphael.

  
“Beautiful night,” he says to announce his arrival, and Raphael looks at him like Simon is the last person in the world he wants to see right now. “Or not.” He sighs. “Raphael, I need to talk to you.”

  
“Not now.”

  
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need your help.”

  
“I said, _not_ -”

  
Raphael stops. And then he coughs.

  
He coughs, and he coughs, and he _coughs_.

  
Simon is beside him in an instant, reaching for him, trying to help; Raphael opens his mouth, perhaps to yell at him, tell him to leave, but the words are lost in a cloud of beautiful blue flowers that litter the ground underneath their feet.

  
Simon knows those flowers. They’ve poured from his mouth everyday for _months_ now.

  
So he asks, quietly, softly: “Raphael, are you in love with me?”

  
\- x -

  
They have a lot that they need to sort through, a lot of awkward conversations that need to be had.

But Raphael sleeps with his head in Simon’s lap, without a flower in sight, and right now it’s enough.


End file.
